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Meanwhile I heard about a month ago that someone who would know, said the Kroger on Forest Drive is going to renovate and update to try to keep up with some high-level competition moving into the area. That Kroger is a mile from my house (4 min.). Whole Foods will be 3.3 miles from me (8 min.). If it's true that Trader Joe's is moving into the Columbia Athletic Club building, it will be 2.2 miles from me (6 min.). Side note: Mast General Store, the Nickelodeon and the Columbia Museum of Art are 2.6 miles in the opposite direction (9 min.). And my yard is pretty. Life is good.
What do you think the Edens guy meant when he said that Columbia did not show well to retailers at the street level? I know there are some answers to this question that our friend from Greenville would make if he was not booted but, I suspect there are more relevant answers. In other words, is the wealth in Columbia harder to see? Not sure I understand that statement.
Besides, it is a good news bad news thing. Bad news is that retailers follow each other around and locate in clusters (Charlotte does not have a whole foods yet). Good news is that Whole Foods will bring others to the city. And, Basil is terrific.
What do you think the Edens guy meant when he said that Columbia did not show well to retailers at the street level? I know there are some answers to this question that our friend from Greenville would make if he was not booted but, I suspect there are more relevant answers. In other words, is the wealth in Columbia harder to see? Not sure I understand that statement.
Besides, it is a good news bad news thing. Bad news is that retailers follow each other around and locate in clusters (Charlotte does not have a whole foods yet). Good news is that Whole Foods will bring others to the city. And, Basil is terrific.
My partner brings up a good point related to the Edens spokesman's statement. Yesterday we were in Publix and I just happened to see an atlas of South Carolina with city maps. The mile legends were the same length for each city map. We were shocked at how huge downtown Columbia is compared to other SC cities' downtowns, even when you don't consider the Devine Street corridor, yet it's not as spread out as you might think in terms of density. Also, from the air you can see the network of very busy roadways and avenues that make up the huge checkerboard pattern. They could see the feng shui at once from the air, but at ground level you have to know where you are by being familiar with the area to get the same effect. They should be able to tell from census tracts where the wealth is. I guess seeing what they wanted to see in terms of location was just easier from the sky. Good thinking on Edens' part.
What do you think the Edens guy meant when he said that Columbia did not show well to retailers at the street level? I know there are some answers to this question that our friend from Greenville would make if he was not booted but, I suspect there are more relevant answers. In other words, is the wealth in Columbia harder to see? Not sure I understand that statement.
The exact statement from The State article was: “The Columbia market to outside retailers does not show well at the ground level,†Darnall said. So Edens planned a route and put Whole Foods officials up in a helicopter, showing them all of the rooftops in the areas around the site. “We get them (back) in the car, and it all starts to click,†he said.
I'm thinking it's a reference to more scattered retail nodes in the Columbia area and the fact that that part of town can be said to be underserved in terms of retail. Once they saw how many houses are in close proximity to the area coupled with demographic data of those neighborhoods, it made good business sense for them.
Actually I was just talking about Columbia's original grid, the downtown one. In Columbia 'downtown' isn't synonymous with 'central business district.' And Devine Street is almost all urban all the way to Whole Foods. And a tightly woven grid is urban by definition, even in a small town.
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